By Andrea Thompson26 January 2017 (Climate Central) – Across a vast swath of Europe and Asia, rain is increasingly falling in the short, localized bursts associated with thunderstorms, seemingly at the expense of events where a steady rain falls over many hours, a new study finds. The study, detailed Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, […]
Rome/Paris, 27 January 2017 (United Nations) – The international pledge to eradicate a devastating livestock disease affecting mostly sheep and goats has taken on new urgency in the wake of a mass die-off of a rare Mongolian antelope. Some 900 Saiga antelopes (Saiga tatarica mongolica) – almost 10 percent of the sub-species’ population – have […]
By Jorge Poblete27 January 2017 (Los Angeles Times) – Chile’s worst ever wildfires threatened the city of Concepcion and the nation’s wine industry Friday, a day after flames destroyed a town about 200 miles south of the nation’s capital. President Michelle Bachelet’s office said the fires had killed 11 people, forced the evacuation of more […]
By Sharon Lerner26 January 2017 (The Intercept) – While Donald Trump was reviving both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, muzzling federal employees, freezing EPA contracts, and first telling the EPA to remove mentions of climate change from its website — and then reversing course — many of the scientists who work on climate […]
27 January 2017 (Climate Nexus) – In various interviews on Thursday, former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition chief Myron Ebell confirmed the Trump team would probably seek significant cuts to the agency’s workforce and budget, but would not provide details of specific policy recommendations he made to the president. Ebell, who told the AP […]
By Niv Sultan 24 January 2017 (Center or Responsive Politics) – Scott Pruitt’s confirmation hearing last week involved some pointed visual props. Making the case that Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who is President Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is cozy with the energy sector, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) held up […]
By Joel Achenbach 26 January 2017 (The Washington Post) – Leaders of several of the nation’s top science organizations say they’ve been shunned by the Trump administration and are alarmed by signs that the administration will muzzle government researchers and reject the scientific evidence that informs such critical issues as vaccine safety and climate change. […]
By Lauren Leatherby27 January 2017 New York (Financial Times) – […] Mr Trump cited terrorism risks as his reason for limiting the number of refugees the US takes. However, since the US refugee programme began in 1975, more than 3.2m refugees have entered the United States and only three have carried out a deadly terrorist […]
By Bryan Menegus26 January 2017 (Gizmodo) – George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, occupied the number one spot on Amazon’s best-selling books list yesterday, where it remains today. A cautionary tale about a brutal, amoral dictator has evidently felt relevant to people lately. But as of today, Amazon—the world’s largest bookseller—is unable to keep up with […]
By Brady Dennis 26 January 2017 (The Washington Post) – It turns out there will be a conference in Atlanta next month about climate change and its effects on public health. It just won’t have the federal government behind it. The reason? Former vice president Al Gore. “He called me and we talked about it […]
